


The Evil Overlord's Guide to Dating

by Mireille



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 06:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13781685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: "If they were going to engage in this ridiculous, generally ill-advised attempt at--whatever was defined by a lot of flirting-while-fighting, three kisses-in-the-aftermath, and nine-and-a-half highly promising minutes on the roof--they were going to engage in it like a couple of mature adults. "Except they're Tony and Loki, so... not so much. Instead, Tony gives Loki advice from the Evil Overlord list, because it seems like a good idea at the time.





	The Evil Overlord's Guide to Dating

**Author's Note:**

> This ignores HUGE chunks of the MCU, and exists in a shiny happy universe where everything up through Avengers happened, and almost everything after that... didn't. It's about 87% fanon and 13% things that seemed like a good idea at the time. 
> 
> But I had fun writing it, so maybe you'll have fun reading it. :)

It was bad enough that a villain had managed to teleport into the tower without even setting off an alarm. _That_ was on Tony, and he'd be fixing that little glitch in the tower's defenses immediately. Half his brain was working on it already. 

It was also Tony's fault that Loki had had the opportunity to examine those defenses. He'd thought it'd be okay restricting Loki to the roof, but apparently he'd been wrong about that. He could tell himself that Loki had been in the tower _before_ last Tuesday, when Tony had met him on the roof and they'd tried and spectacularly failed to have fifteen damn minutes where they could interact like normal humanoid-type beings who really wanted to get into one another's pants. 

(The fact that they had only managed nine and a half minutes before the call to assemble came out was Amora's fault, and Tony was definitely holding a grudge about that one. He suspected Loki was too, but then, he suspected Loki was holding a grudge about the morning his breakfast was cold, a thousand years ago when he was four. Loki, by his estimation, was between seventy-five and ninety percent grudge at any given moment.) 

Anyway, it didn't matter when Loki had figured out how to get into the penthouse. What mattered was that he _had_. JARVIS hadn't detected him until it was too late, and nothing had stopped him, and Tony was going to have to fix that _yesterday_. So, yeah, that was bad enough to ruin anybody's day, all on its own.

The really annoying part, though, was that Loki didn't appear to have done anything beyond one instance of petty theft. He hadn't tried to access any of the Avengers' files, he didn't seem to have set any booby-traps (magical or not) anywhere in the building. He'd appeared in Tony's living room and disappeared about fifty seconds later, having achieved his apparent objective--and given that they'd all been down in the common areas at the time, none of them had been able to get there in time to do anything even though JARVIS had sounded the alarm promptly. 

But the whole thing had been utterly ridiculous. What the hell would Loki want with Tony's phone? 

He was a _villain_. If he wanted a cell phone, he could steal a _new_ one. Or steal money and _buy_ one. 

He was a sorcerer, for fuck's sake, what did he need with a cell phone at all? It wasn't like Loki was making an effort to integrate with Midgardian society. Most times that SHIELD surveillance had caught sight of him, he'd been alone. The rest of the time, he'd been with Amora, Doom, or some of their henchmen, and somehow, Tony doubted that Loki had wanted the phone to call any of them. He was sure they had magical means of communication that were harder to track. 

No, not _the_ phone. Not some generic phone. Specifically, Tony's phone. Hell, Tony would have _given_ him a StarkPhone if he'd asked. Maybe not the newest model, because crime didn't pay, but definitely one they could remotely activate the GPS tracking on. But no, the jackass had to take Tony's. 

The fact that Tony didn't keep any sensitive information on the phone, that he'd had JARVIS delete anything personal from the phone and cut off its access to anything else on the tower network as soon as he'd noticed it was gone, and that he'd already replaced it--none of that did a damn thing to make this any less annoying. 

Revenge might, though. 

What he'd already done hadn't been revenge. Those had been basic security measures. He'd have done the same thing if he'd lost the phone outside the tower, and Loki was probably expecting something like that. Tony really didn't believe that Loki had stolen that phone to get a tactical advantage over the Avengers, or access to SHIELD information, or anything else useful and productive. 

No, he would have been willing to bet that Loki had stolen the phone for the singular purpose of pissing Tony off. Double or nothing on “this is the asshole trickster god equivalent of pulling the pigtails of the girl you like and running away.” He wasn't about to let Loki get away with that. 

If they were going to engage in this ridiculous, risky (on so many levels), generally ill-advised attempt at... whatever the fuck was defined by a lot of flirting-while-fighting, three kisses-in-the-aftermath (two while Tony was apprehending Loki, and one while Loki was gloating at Tony), and nine-and-a-half highly promising minutes on the roof... they were going to engage in it like a couple of mature adults. 

Tony could brick the phone, of course, that'd be easy enough for him. But that seemed inelegant, somehow. Maybe if he _almost_ bricked it? Nothing getting in or out except to or from Tony's new phone? 

Then Tony could still use GPS to find out where Loki was--only in emergencies, of course, or when Tony really wanted to see what they could do with more than ten minutes of uninterrupted time together--and he could annoy the shit out of Loki, but the phone wouldn't do Loki any good whatsoever. (He ignored the thought that if Loki had taken the phone to be a pain in the ass, it had already served its purpose. Loki had definitely taken the phone to be a pain in the ass, but maybe not _just_ for that reason.)

Right. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to take care of that, and after that, he'd reinforce the defenses. And then reinforce the reinforcements. Because Loki turning up uninvited had a chance of not being terrible, at least from Tony's perspective, but if Loki could get in, Doom and Amora and whatever other villains thought they were tough enough to take on the Avengers might be able to get in. There was basically no chance any of them would be there to make out with Tony, and even less chance that Tony would think that was a good idea.

It didn't take him very long to push out the “system update” that would turn his former phone into a glorified walkie-talkie-- _See, Loki_ , he thought, _this is why you steal your phone from some random schmuck on the street and not the guy who designed the original prototype._ Just one thing left to do before he got down to serious work: making sure Loki knew what he'd done. Composing an appropriately obnoxious (irritating, but not so irritating that Loki wouldn't be willing to let Tony grope him again should the opportunity arise) text message was going to take longer. 

Then inspiration struck: a vague memory of something he'd seen passed around on the Internet years ago. A quick search initially turned up a bunch of dead links--it'd been longer than Tony thought--but then he struck gold. 

Just a few seconds later, he had the message ready to go: a link to “Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord,” with the note, _Let me call your attention to # 50: 'My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh Powerbooks.'_

Then he dove in to the problem of keeping uninvited phone thieves out of the tower, and didn't check for replies for a few hours, until his back started hurting and he needed to get up and stretch anyway. 

He had a lot of the usual messages (category: ignorable; category: make Pepper deal with it; category: respond with a string of random emojis because it's funny to watch Grandpa Steve struggle to decipher the gibberish), plus one from his stolen phone: _I fail to see the relevance. I don't have a computer._

_This phone is a computer,_ Tony responded, including an eye-roll emoji because seriously, if Loki was going to spend most of his time on Earth, he ought to start at least trying to think like a human. Tony had initially thought that Loki was better adapted to Earth culture than Thor, and maybe that was true at first. Maybe it was even true now, because Thor only understood--or admitted to understanding--things when he felt like it, but Loki had some huge blind spots, and “giving a damn about technology” was one of them. Not understanding it, or even using it when necessary, but paying attention to it. 

For obvious reasons, that irritated the shit out of Tony. 

_& ,_ he went on, because he had no problem double-texting people, _I designed the OS. Stealing my phone was stupid._ Well. He'd at least had a lot of input into the design of the OS, even if he hadn't done everything himself. Enough that he'd put in so many back doors that Loki would never be able to keep him out, possibly not even with magic.

Loki didn't answer right away, so Tony tossed the phone down on the lab bench and got himself some coffee, rolling his shoulders to work out some of the kinks. As he took the first sip, he heard the message alert go off. 

_Might I direct your attention to another item on the same list? '35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.'_

Oh, now that was just uncalled-for. That little shit. 

_1),_ Tony typed furiously, _I look great with a beard. 2) I AM a disaffected GenXer._ It wasn't unreasonable for Loki not to have understood the term, but Tony didn't feel like being not-unreasonable with the asshole god who had stolen his cell phone. _3) not the evil overlord here._

 _That's debatable,_ was the reply, and Tony wasn't sure whether that was about his beard looking great or his not being an evil overlord; it probably wasn't about Generation X. Either way, it was completely untrue, which was about what he'd expect from the god of lies.

 _Suit yourself, Gandalf,_ Tony sent back, which wasn't his best comeback ever, but what the hell, he had work to do. He couldn't waste time trying to think of the perfect smart-ass name to call Loki. 

But he did need to read through the Evil Overlord list again later, to see if any other appropriate items to annoy him with came to mind.

****

“Number 54,” Tony said, loudly enough for the sound to carry over the noise the Doombots were making, both as they tried to hit Loki with magic and lasers and possibly magical lasers--and he really wanted to leave at least one of them intact enough that he could take it back to the lab and reverse-engineer it, because _fucking magical lasers_ \--and as Loki blasted them with crackling green magic that he also wanted to get back to the lab and try to reverse-engineer, because based on the effects, Loki had just hit them with some kind of entropy weapon. 

Tony was a hundred and fourteen percent certain that Loki was not going to let him try to reverse-engineer his magic, even if he asked nicely. 

Not even if he asked _really_ nicely, while on his knees. Naked. 

Hm. Tony turned off outgoing communications, because backup would be arriving eventually, once they finished evacuating all the civilians who were too stupid or too stubborn to evacuate themselves once they saw a bunch of robots and a pissed-off sorcerer, and there were some things his teammates' innocent ears did not need to be sullied with, even if Cap's facial expression would be hilarious. “Hey, Loki!” he yelled. 

“I'm rather busy here, Stark,” Loki pointed out, as another Doombot staggered, its knee joints starting to crumble from oxidation. 

A repulsor blast put it out of its misery, and a second one took care of the 'bot that was coming up behind Loki. “Now that you're not busy,” he said, smirking even though Loki wouldn't be able to see it, “want to come back to the lab with me? I want to figure out how that entropy thing you have going on works.”

He dodged quickly enough that the next blast from Loki hit a nearby Volkswagen and not him. The rear bumper of the Volkswagen suddenly looked about thirty years older. Thirty _hard_ years. Ouch. “How about if I beg? On my knees, naked?” 

Loki paused for a moment. “You have my permission to try it and see.”

That was about what Tony had figured, but it had been worth a shot. “Kind of busy here,” he parroted back. “You know, saving your ass and all.” He punctuated that with another blast that failed to completely incapacitate the Doombot coming in for a landing. “Behind you!” he yelled, and Loki spun around, hurling spells at the robot while Tony provided covering fire.

Once it had been melted into magical slag, Loki turned back to Tony. “What does 'number 54' mean, anyway?” 

It took him a second to remember what he'd been talking about before he got distracted by fascinating technology and equally fascinating sorcerers... sorcery, he meant. Oh, that. He turned the comm back on. “JARVIS,” he murmured, “put Rule 54 from the list on my display.” The AI complied, and Tony read it off. 'I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.'”

“I might have known,” Loki said. “You do know Doom isn't a demonic being, though? He's as Midgardian as you are.” 

“I notice you're not denying the part where you made a deal with him and then double-crossed him.” Tony cleared the display (as well as turning his mic off again) so that he could better focus on saving Loki's ass, which Loki would probably describe as something more like “helping him dispose of the last few Doombots,” and Loki didn't say anything else until they were alone in the street.

“We may have struck a bargain, yes,” Loki acknowledged. 

Tony raised his faceplate so that Loki could see him roll his eyes at that. “And you betrayed him.” 

“He violated the terms of our arrangement first. At that point, I consider myself entirely justified in acting against him. I specifically required that he _not_ use New York as the testing ground for his new robots. That left the entire rest of the planet available, but what does he do? Send them straight to New York. Never mind that even if any of them survive, you and your team will now have reams of information about their weaknesses, no, he just wants to show off.” 

“You'd probably have stabbed him in the back anyway,” Tony said. 

“Of course I would have. I can't stand the tacky little mortal. He talks about himself in the third person, Stark.” 

Tony thought about pointing out that Loki had climbed up on top of one of the deactivated Doombots to give himself a better vantage point for ranting, and that he was wearing the stupid horned helmet again, so maybe he wanted to hold off on calling anybody else tacky. On the other hand, he enjoyed Loki's rants these days--now that they were less “utterly unhinged” and more “fundamentally grumpy”--and this was turning out to be a pretty good one. 

He went over to the Doombot Loki was using as a stage, purely to check to see if it was intact enough to be useful as a subject for study, and said, “So it's probably a good thing you were here in New York, where the Avengers could save you. If he'd tried them out in the middle of the Gobi Desert or somewhere, and you pissed him off, Doom would have kicked your ass.”

Loki glowered down at him. “I was having no difficulty with his creatures before you arrived.” 

“Not what it looked like to me, but sure, if that's what you need to believe so you can sleep at night, we can go with that.” He grinned. “Consider me here just to offer helpful advice for the would-be evil overlord.” 

“That's another thing,” Loki said. “Setting aside that the list in question is completely ridiculous, why would you be giving me advice on how to be more effective? Surely it would be to your advantage if I did make every 'mistake' in the highly-suspect book.”

“One,” Tony said, “it's funny. Especially when you argue with the list. And two, don't you want to be less boring and predictable? You'd think that'd be right up your alley.” 

“I wasn't aware that you thought of me as 'boring and predictable,'” Loki said, stepping down off the robot 'corpse' to stand facing Tony. 

“You do have your moments,” he admitted, because even he could see that telling a god of chaos and mischief that he was boring was maybe not the best decision he could make. 

“Like this, I presume?” Loki took another step closer and kissed Tony. 

“Actually, no. That was pretty damn predictable--though to be fair, it was not even a little bit boring.” Kissing Loki while he was in the suit wasn't as enjoyable as doing it in street clothes, where he could feel Loki pressed against him and could grope more effectively, but it was still good. It was always good. 

Which, of course, is why Steve's voice came over the comm at that exact minute, because _fuck his life._ “Tony? We've got all the civilians clear, and the damage seems to be limited to a pretty small area. Everything okay there?” 

Tony counted to five before reactivating outgoing communications, both because he wanted a couple more seconds of kissing Loki before he had to go back to heroically disapproving of him, and because while he had proven in the past that he _could_ tell his childhood hero to go fuck himself (Steve had some kind of God-given talent for unintentional cockblocking: he'd been responsible for the interruption of two of the three kisses-in-the-aftermath _and_ had been the one giving the alert about Amora that had ended the nine-and-a-half minutes), he always felt crappy about it later. 

So he sounded basically calm when he responded, “Everything's fine, yeah. I'm going to want one of these 'bots hauled back to my lab, though.”

“Any sign of Loki?” The original witnesses had only mentioned Loki, since he'd been sighted and Doom wasn't quite the same degree of household name in New York, so there was no point in lying. 

“He was here,” Tony said, which was not technically a lie. “He wasn't working with Doom, though. I got the impression he was the target.”

“Should I assume he's long gone?” 

“You should.” Also not technically a lie. In Tony's opinion, Steve should absolutely assume that Loki was nowhere in sight, possibly not even on Earth any longer, and that Steve should therefore not come into this alley looking for him. Definitely not _yet_. Tony wasn't done with Loki yet. “You can also tell Thor that he was completely uninjured the last I saw him.” 

Loki gave him a disgusted look at that. Well, let him. Tony wasn't getting into the middle of Loki and Thor's issues, but Thor was his friend, and Thor worried about Loki--and not in the same way that everyone else worried about Loki. 

Okay, maybe the same way Tony occasionally worried about Loki, though he still also worried about him in the “chaos and destruction and really bad things” way. He'd never claimed to be uncomplicated, even before throwing Loki into the mix. 

“All right,” Steve said. “We're on our way.” 

“Okay, Cap,” Tony said, and cut off his mic again. To Loki, he said, “We're going to have to cut this short.” 

“Again,” Loki said. “This is beginning to get irritating.” But he kissed Tony one last time, then vanished just a few seconds before Steve and Natasha turned up. 

Which was a good thing, Tony told himself. This whole “making out with villains” thing was a terrible idea, after all. 

It just never seemed all that terrible when Loki was right there. Or when he was harassing Tony via his stolen cell phone. Or when Tony was poring over the Evil Overlord list--not to mention all of its sequels--to find potentially-applicable “helpful suggestions” to save for the right moment. 

But other than that, it was really _good_ that they kept getting interrupted. 

Absolutely fucking great, in fact.

****

There were situations that called for the perfectly-chosen phrase. There were also situations that called for _LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL_ sent to Tony's old phone--he refused to call it “Loki's phone” even though he'd accepted the fact that he was never getting it back--repeatedly, while Tony sat in the post-mission debriefing and didn't try very hard to hide how incredibly bored he was. Today was one of the latter.

 _That's me laughing at you, just so you know,_ he added, after four “LOL” messages had gone unacknowledged. 

“Does anyone have initial estimates of the damage?” Steve was saying; Tony decided he might as well pay attention for a while, since _someone_ was ignoring him. 

Coulson had the estimates. Of course Coulson had the numbers. Coulson was always able to put his hands on whatever incredibly boring data could be compiled about the Avengers' or SHIELD's activities. “Surprisingly small,” was what he led with. “One casualty: a man who tripped over his shoelace as he fled the area. Some property damage, but as Loki materialized in the middle of an unused pee-wee soccer field, and most of his spells were non-corporeal illusions, again, there was very little actual damage done.” He grimaced. “To be completely honest, panicking civilians caused more property damage than Loki did.” 

“He did try to blast Tony a few times,” Bruce pointed out. 

Tony grinned; that had been his idea. Once he'd worked out that Loki didn't actually seem to be doing anything very destructive--the illusory monsters had been nasty-looking, but didn't do anything but cause panic--he'd offered to go in and confront Loki on his own. 

(One of these days, Thor was going to come back from Asgard and want to be the one talking his brother out of whatever awful thing he was doing at the time, but for now, it was both making him look good in front of the others and letting him do exactly what he wanted: alternate between annoying the hell out of Loki and making obscene suggestions. He suspected that where the two of them were concerned, both of those counted as foreplay--well, he suspected on Loki's behalf; he knew damn well they counted for him.) 

But to make things look a little more believable--and probably because Loki felt like it, too--Loki had “attacked” him. Tony wasn't sure if those quotation marks he was mentally putting around “attacked” were all that accurate, really, because he'd dodged in the wrong direction once and was going to have to spend a couple of hours in the lab fixing the left elbow joint in his armor. “Minor damage to the suit, none to me,” he reported. 

“Good to hear,” Steve said, and Coulson made a couple of notes on his tablet. 

Tony glanced down at his phone while Steve was reviewing their effectiveness at crowd control. _Not funny, Stark._

 _Hilarious,_ he responded. _Barton shot you in the ass._

While Tony had been keeping Loki distracted and Steve had directed the crowd-control efforts (they'd discovered a while back that even panicking people tended to listen to Captain Goddamn America)--and Bruce had remained in reserve, in case Loki started doing damage for real and the big guy had been needed--Clint and Natasha had circled around behind. Loki had managed to keep them busy dealing with his illusions; they might not be able to do real damage, but they could block a line of sight just like they were real and solid. 

But Clint had gotten off one really good shot, and yes, he'd managed to put an arrow right in Loki's ass. 

And no, that was never going to stop being hilarious. Especially since Loki had immediately teleported the hell out of there, and he was now sending Tony grouchy text messages, so it was obvious no real damage had been done. 

“Hey, Clint,” Tony said, while he was thinking of it, “I thought those tranq arrows were supposed to be able to take down an Asgardian?” 

“I don't _make_ the arrows,” Clint pointed out. Tony was about to bristle with indignation when he realized that yes, he'd designed the _arrows_ , but he hadn't had anything to do with the tranquilizer itself. “And since Thor wasn't here to test them, I had to try them out on Cap. They work on him.”

“I'm ninety percent sure they'll work on the Other Guy,” Bruce volunteered. “They wouldn't knock him out, but they'd slow him down a lot. Well, _some._ But there must be something about Loki's metabolism that interacts with the drug differently.” 

_Hey, are you feeling sleepy?_

_Your gift for non sequiturs remains unsurpassed. No, I'm not feeling sleepy. What are you up to?_

_You got shot with enough sedatives to take out the Hulk._

_But clearly not enough to affect me._ Tony would have to figure out a good way to pass that information on to Bruce, without coming right out and saying, “So while I was flirting with Loki, he mentioned...” 

Then again, Bruce wasn't all that judgmental, and he _was_ reasonably observant. Tony could probably just come right out and say that. 

“There's one thing I don't understand,” Natasha said. Tony put his phone down on his lap and focused his attention on her, because either there really was something she didn't understand, which was worrisome because there was almost nothing about tactics or combat situations that Natasha _didn't_ understand, or she understood it damn well and was being tactful, in which case... Tony had a sneaking suspicion what that would be about. 

“What?” Steve said, writing something on his notepad, because of course Steve took notes on paper like it was 1876.

“What Loki's goal was. For that matter, what his goal has been for the past six weeks or so. He's been a thorn in our sides, but he's done very little real harm. The most destructive event he's been involved in during that time period was the one with the Doombots, and Loki didn't cause most of the damage that time.” 

Yeah, she was onto him. Her expression didn't really change when she looked at Tony, but there was something in the set of her mouth and the look in her eyes that felt like a tiny smirk. 

Tony shrugged, just a little, and now he knew he wasn't reading too much into things, because she rolled her eyes at him. “Pay attention, Stark.” 

“Maybe he's just bored,” Coulson suggested. 

Good thinking, Agent. Tony suddenly decided that--at least for today--he really liked Coulson.

“He's playing with us,” Clint muttered. “Like a cat playing with his food.” 

Terrible thinking, Clint. Not unjustifiable thinking--not even Tony, who spent at least a few minutes every day contemplating the obscene things he could do to Loki's body, could argue that Clint was wrong, or that Clint's hatred of Loki was an overreaction--but terrible thinking. Incorrect thinking. 

Shit, it had better be incorrect thinking. 

He was mostly sure that it was. 

_You got shot. In the ass. Because you were making a dramatic speech about how I should cower before you._ It had been a really good dramatic speech, Tony would be the first to admit, but it had gone on way too long. Demonstrably, since it had allowed Clint the time to get into position to shoot. 

_I believe I said you should kneel before me._

Oh. Right. _Same thing,_ Tony sent. 

The reply came almost immediately. _You're not that naive._

No shit. On the other hand, it entertained Tony to pretend that he had no idea that about half of Loki's speech could have been summarized as, “Also, why are you not blowing me right now?” 

_And you're just trying to distract me from the fact that you went for grand melodrama, and got shot in the ass._

_It has done no permanent damage._

Of course it hadn't. Loki might not technically be from Asgard, but he had the same kind of near-indestructibility. But it had probably hurt a little. Or rather, it had probably hurt Loki's ass a little, and Loki's pride a little more. 

Tony grinned to himself as he sent one last message: _#58: 'If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.' Or a one-hundred-liner, before you start nit-picking._

Then he turned off his phone for the rest of the meeting, just to see how many increasingly-snippy messages Loki would send him before giving up.

****

“I don't believe that Loki is set on conquest,” Thor said thoughtfully. He'd finally come back from Asgard for a while, and before he took off to spend some time with Jane, Steve had decided they should ask Thor if he had any insight into Loki's recent behavior. 

“Not,” Steve had added quickly, “that we're complaining that he's been relatively harmless lately.” 

Thor wasn't complaining either. Thor was _beaming_ at the news that Loki was being somewhat less terrible. “Loki has ever enjoyed creating mischief,” he reminded them. “Long before there was any darkness in him.” 

Then he told them what he probably thought was a charming childhood story about Loki turning into a snake so that Thor would pick him up and cuddle him. Actually, if it had ended there, it _would_ have been charming. But it was Loki, so he turned back into himself and stabbed Thor in the side instead. Probably laughed himself sick, too, the little shit. 

Jesus Christ, a family therapist could make a _fortune_ on Asgard. 

“We need to be on the alert for that,” Natasha said. 

“I'm not picking up any snakes,” Tony told her. “Not even in the suit.” 

“Not snakes, specifically,” Steve said, just like Tony hadn't just been being a smart-ass. “Shapeshifting. We don't ever take that into account when we go after Loki.” 

“Yeah, I got that, Cap, thanks.” 

Thor had looked lost in thought for the last little while, and then he said, “I believe--be aware that I'm not certain, but I believe this to be correct--that Loki is more likely to use his shape-changing abilities to confuse, to distract--”

“To irritate?” Natasha suggested, and Thor laughed. 

“Yes, definitely, to irritate, more than he uses them in battle. He prefers other magics in a fight. At least, that was always the case when he fought at my side.” 

The conversation started to wander shortly after that--Thor's reminiscences of life on Asgard led to other people's stories--all carefully chosen, Tony noticed, to be funny and not give away all that much, except Steve's, which Tony suspected were _meant_ to be funny and un-revealing, but wound up breaking everyone's goddamn hearts. 

Tony'd had his heart _literally_ broken before, so he felt justified in removing himself from that conversation. Besides, something about that first story of Thor's sounded familiar, and... aha. There it was. 

_# 34,_ he texted. _'I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.'_

 _When did I turn into a snake?_

_When Thor was eight, apparently? Unless he was making it up._

_Why did he tell you about that?_

Tony thought about replying, “Because we've been talking about you all night, and frankly, I think everyone's getting more than a little bit suspicious of the way you've been acting lately.” Then he decided against it, because he wouldn't put it past Loki to do something genuinely terrible just to restore his bad reputation with the Avengers. _I think he thought it was cute. Also, he brought mead back from Asgard and he is definitely not quite sober._ Then he pasted the Evil Overlord rule into the message again, just to make his point. 

_It helped._

_How the fuck did that help?_

_It helped me stab him._

Okay, the man had a point. If getting close enough to tiny eight-year-old Thor that you could stab him without making him suspicious first was your goal, then apparently turning into a snake helped with that. That was a fucking stupid goal, because what little kid went around actually stabbing his brother with an actual dagger? Not even in some kind of fight, or by accident. Just because it was Tuesday and he was bored. 

A psycho, that was who. 

Fucking hell, Tony wondered about his brain sometimes, and why it still agreed with his body that going after Loki was a fantastic idea, even far beyond just the obvious fact that the sex would be incredible. 

In the end, Tony just answered, _If you say so, Norman Bates,_ and left it at that.

****

The next time Thor wanted to sit around drinking and telling stories, Tony thought, the two of them could probably swap several tales of “crazed Asgardian magicians who want to get in my pants.” 

So far, the Chitauri invasion put Loki in the lead in the “crazed” department, but Amora was definitely scoring highly in the category of determination. It didn't make a lot of sense to Tony. Sure, Thor was a great guy, and good-looking enough if you liked the “brick wall meets surfer meets RenFaire” look, but surely there were at least a few dozen guys like that on Asgard. Granted, they weren't the prince, but what the hell, the prince wasn't interested. Find someone else and move on. 

Amora did not seem to have grasped the concept of moving the fuck on. Which was why, even though she was _technically_ in the middle of a fight with Loki--why was Tony not fucking surprised that Loki had managed to piss off yet another of his fellow villains?--she still had time to send a mind-control spell Thor's way. 

They knew it was a mind-control spell because after Loki had intercepted it, he'd explained to Tony at great length _and_ great volume that they were complete morons for letting Thor anywhere near Amora, and would someone get him out of here so that he didn't lumber around getting in the way and finally being compromised by one of the Enchantress' love spells? Tony had no trouble translating that into “I'm worried about my idiot brother, and would prefer to not have to spend my time protecting him,” and convinced Thor that he should go help Animal Control round up the fourteen passersby that Amora had transformed into snow-white goats. Thor apparently _liked_ goats, luckily, so it wasn't hard to get him to agree. 

So Thor was doing that, and Bruce was safely out of the action and keeping an eye on things, passing on information to the others and remaining ready just in case the big guy was needed; the rest of the team was getting into position to take out Amora, and somehow--even without him planning it, but he wasn't going to complain--it was his job to deal with Loki.

Technically, his mission objective was to neutralize Loki and remove him from combat, but Clint had phrased it as, “Cap says you're on Loki-sitting duty,” and that was funnier to say. 

And much easier to say than to do, because there were eleven Lokis, at last count, all of whom were equally pissed off at Amora and her hench-creep, Scum or whatever the hell his name was. Finding the real one wasn't going to be easy. 

Not even when Steve got in a few really good dings with the shield and Amora (and company) had vanished, off to lick their wounds and yell, “Curses, foiled again!” or whatever villains generally did after losing that wasn't “find one of the guys who'd just beaten them and see how much time they had to make out before the rest of the 'heroes' found them.” 

That one was probably Loki-specific. And it had better also be Tony-specific, damn it. 

Amora being gone meant the multiple Lokis weren't doing anything especially dangerous at the moment; they were just irritating. One of them had vanished, off to turn the goats back into humans (“They'll smell better that way, at least,” had been his justification; “besides, Thor likes goats, and I like taking away things Thor likes.”), but that still left ten possibilities. 

Tony was reasonably sure that the goat-disenchanting Loki was one of the illusions. If Loki had physically gone that close to Thor, there probably would have been hugging, screaming, and bloodshed before now; after all, it had been nearly five minutes. Even in New Jersey, that kind of behavior would stand out. 

Still, ten Lokis, all of which were insulting his intelligence, complaining that they couldn't get a good look at his ass in the suit, and disappearing just as Tony got close to them, only to reappear a few yards away. 

If they'd been doing anything remotely dangerous, Tony would have started to feel completely justified in shooting them. The real one would heal up quickly enough, he'd identify the fake ones with ease, and, most importantly, it would improve his mood. 

He'd almost talked himself into giving it a try when he realized he was tangled in something, and it had wrapped around his right boot. Great, what the fuck had he managed to step in? 

Tony looked down and saw that he hadn't stepped in anything. Rather, something had decided to twine itself around his ankle and calf: a medium-sized, bright-green, slightly iridescent snake. For a reptile, it was almost pretty. 

It was also an asshole alien sorcerer who was on Tony's _last fucking nerve_ , or he'd eat his helmet. Hell, if he was wrong, he'd eat Loki's helmet, horns and all. “There are easier ways to get my attention,” he grumbled. “And if you try to stab me, I'm going to shoot you. I've been considering it for a while now anyway.” Never mind that the suit would deflect a blade. It was the principle of the thing. 

The snake slithered further up his leg, and Tony was just about to entertain doubts that maybe this was an actual reptile after all, never mind that it didn't look real. No, that wasn't the right way to describe it. It looked real, but it didn't look like any snake Tony had ever seen. 

That was when, in the space of a blink, the snake turned into Loki. Tony had to admit he'd rather have Loki wrapped around him than a snake (even a snake that was technically still Loki) any day. “Still not the best way of getting my attention,” Tony said as Loki untangled his limbs from around Tony and stood up straighter. 

“I wasn't trying to get your attention. I was trying to _evade_ your attention, and since I was already coiled around your leg when you noticed me, I believe I succeeded. Now get that ridiculous helmet out of my way.” 

“Well, you are the expert in ridiculous helmets,” Tony muttered, but he raised the faceplate anyway, grinning in the expectation that Loki would be kissing him as soon as it was lifted. 

He should have known better. Loki just smirked at him and kept talking. “It also enabled me to avoid the worst of Amora's attentions, so it was doubly successful. In other words, turning into a snake _does_ occasionally prove useful.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Why are we even talking about this right now?” 

“Because you haven't acknowledged that I'm right and you're wrong, and I'm not kissing you until you do.”

That left Tony with two choices: give Loki what he wanted, or go for the technicality and do the kissing himself. It took less than a millisecond for him to decide which option sounded better and kiss Loki--awkwardly, because of the suit, which hadn't been designed with this in mind (though Tony had some thoughts for the next model); if Loki hadn't cooperated enthusiastically, Tony wasn't sure how successful his attempt would have been. He did, though, and it was, and this time, Tony was not going to let Loki get out of here without at least making arrangements to meet up with him later, somewhere less battle-damaged. 

“Hey, Stark, Cap wants--what the _fuck_ is going on here?” 

Of course it was Clint. Tony had accepted the fact that getting caught was inevitable, but being caught by Clint had been his worst-case scenario. Worse than Thor. Worse than Fury. 

“You're smarter than that, Barton,” Loki said. “I'm sure you can work it out.” 

“Basically what it looks like,” Tony cut in, because the last thing he needed right now was for Loki to start needling Clint. “I _will_ let him shoot you again,” he hissed to Loki. “And I won't kiss it better.” 

“Fucking hell,” Clint spat. “Of all the fucking people you could--you know what he is, Stark, how could you?” 

Tony was saved from having to answer--or not answer, because he didn't owe Clint an answer for that, but he also didn't want to tell Clint to fuck off, because Clint's opinion of Loki was one hundred percent justified even if Tony didn't agree with it--by the arrival of the rest of the team. 

Now that he thought about it, “saved” might not have been the best description. The collective reaction was not comforting. Steve looked shocked. Natasha looked amused. Bruce looked like he'd just developed a migraine, but he looked like that a lot around Tony anyway. 

Thor looked... unsurprised. That would have been interesting, if Tony hadn't just wanted this entire awkward interlude to end. 

Apparently, Tony wasn't the only one who wanted to avoid this conversation, because suddenly, he was standing there by himself, like an idiot. He grinned at the others and said, in a falsely enthusiastic voice, “Great! I'm glad everybody's here. There's been something I wanted to tell you guys for a while now....” 

Later, much later, when he thought he was probably just going to quit the Avengers and join Loki as a villain if he had to talk about this nebulous non-relationship that he and Loki had going on for five more seconds, he texted Loki: _It. NEVER. Helps._

Then, just for good measure, he added, _Asshole._

****

There were a lot of things that turned out to be much better in theory than they were in practice: orgies, for example. And, on the more polite-company end of the scale, chocolate fountains. Both sounded like good ideas, but mostly just wound up being a huge mess for someone to clean up at the end of the evening.

Dragons were turning out to fit into that category, too. For about three minutes, Tony had thought they were was pretty damn amazing, in a “Holy shit, we're fighting _dragons_ ,” sense, but after that, dragons were just really big pains in the ass: heavily armored tanks with claws, fangs, and inexhaustible flamethrowers. 

In conclusion, they fucking sucked. 

Another thing that fucking sucked in Tony's life right now was the number of conversations he'd had to have lately that had the not-very-well-hidden aim of determining whether or not Tony had gone over to the Other Side. 

Like there even was a cohesive “Other Side.” If there had been, he wouldn't be out here fighting dragons with Thor while the rest of the team--the non-aerial members--concentrated on the ground battle, because New York wouldn't be the chosen battleground when all three of the most persistent thorns in their sides decided they wanted to eliminate the competition. 

Or, rather, from the reports coming over the comm, when two of the most persistent, etc., wanted to wipe out the third. 

“We need to deal with these creatures, Stark,” Thor called. “I believe we will be needed elsewhere soon.” 

That was just another way of saying what Tony was thinking, which was essentially “Oh, shit, oh fuck, kill these fucking dragons so we can stop those assholes from straight-up murdering Loki, whatever he did to richly deserve it.” 

At least he was teamed up with Thor, so he didn't have to pretend he wasn't worried. He just had to keep blasting the fuck out of dragons, and that was something he was quite willing to do. And Thor didn't want to have any awkward conversations, so that was also great. 

Thor hadn't wanted to have any awkward conversations at all, in the two weeks since the rest of the team had found out about him and Loki; Thor had clapped him on the shoulder--which had hurt a little, but no more than Thor's affectionate gestures usually did if Tony wasn't wearing a suit--and left it at that. 

Tony was feeling extremely positive about Thor these days. 

Even more so when the last dragon plummeted to the ground in a really disgusting manner (he'd never visualized the whale-and-petunias scene from Hitchhiker's Guide before, even though he'd read the books more than once as a teenager, but it turned out that a large animal splatting on the ground from a great height was incredibly gross), and Thor immediately informed the others that they were on their way. 

Doom was already gone when they got there, taking all the still-functioning Doombots with him, and the five of them plus Loki were able to drive Amora off, even if “I can't believe we're _saving Loki_ ” got said more than once, by more than one person. (Tony didn't say it, but he definitely thought it once or twice.) 

And then Tony was pretty sure everyone else was expecting some kind of touching emotional scene--even if they really didn't want to see it. Everyone but Loki, anyway, because Loki was smirking at him like he knew exactly what Tony was going to say. Interesting, because not even Tony knew what he was going to say. 

To his surprise, it was, “What the ever-loving fuck do you think you're doing? You don't like Doom and Amora, great. Nobody does. I know I don't. You know what I don't do? I don't go out of my way to start fights with them! And I sure as fuck don't do it in your front yard, assuming that you're just going to come and clean up after me!”

He was aware that this might have been a really bad idea. It wasn't as though Loki had, oh, ever tried to _kill him_ or anything, with arguably less provocation than this. But right this minute, Tony didn't fucking care. He was too damn pissed to care; yell now, regret later if he lived that long. “Thor cares about you, and I probably like you more than any other human being does, but we are not your bodyguard detail, so _stop pulling this bullshit!_ ” 

He didn't wait for Loki to answer--it didn't look like Loki was going to answer, anyway; he wasn't even looking at Tony--just stalked off and let someone else deal with this shit for now. Which they did, mostly by listening to Thor's argument that since Loki was the victim of this attack and had only been defending himself against two known threats, they shouldn't try bringing him in. Tony suspected that decision had been made partly on the basis of “Thor has a point” and partly on the basis of “today has been enough of a pain in the ass, anyway.” 

And to think, for about two minutes, dragons had been pretty cool. Fucking sorcerers. Fucking Asgardians, even the adopted ones. Fucking megalomaniacs. 

Fucking _Loki_ , who could have been fucking _killed_ and Tony was not about to forget that. Or forgive it, either. Tony blasted a chunk of concrete--rubble from the battle--into smaller chunks. It'd be easier to haul off that way, anyway, and it did sort of make him feel better. 

Until he turned around and saw the rest of the team looking at him. Loki was gone, of course, and Tony was mostly grateful for that. Loki might get the wrong damn idea from Tony's reaction. 

Loki might get the right damn idea from Tony's reaction, and Tony wasn't sure which would piss him off more at the moment. 

Whichever, though, at least Loki hadn't decided to try murdering him, and maybe that was a good sign? Or maybe it just meant that Loki had already had enough people try to kill him today, and for once in his very long life had known when enough was enough. 

Tony was on his way back to the tower when JARVIS contacted him. “Sir, you have an incoming message from Mr. Laufeyson on your phone. Would you like me to display it?” 

“Why not? It's not like this day could get a lot worse.” He made sure he had a clear flight path; the last thing this day needed was for him to have failed to notice that he was on a collision course with a building. He wanted YouTube to be filled with “IRON MAN AND THOR BATTLE DRAGONS,” not “IRON MAN IS AN IDIOT.” (Especially since he was a certified genius, and only Loki's presence turned him into an idiot.) 

_There are very few people--and even fewer mortals--I would allow to address me thus, Stark._

“So what's your point?” Tony muttered. “I already knew that. Actually, JARVIS, send that as a response.” 

_If you persist in avoiding me, it forces me to find other ways to attract your attention._

Tony blinked at that. He kept blinking even after he cleared the display.

That... did not sound contradictory to anything he knew about Loki, so it might be the truth. He could run it past Thor, but how about _hell fucking no._

Loki had picked a fight with Doom and Amora, in the middle of New York, because he thought it was the best way to get Tony's attention. 

He wasn't wrong about Tony avoiding him, though mostly Tony was avoiding everything that wasn't his lab. He was getting tired of people being Concerned About His Moral Compass. His moral compass was _fine_. He was perfectly clear on the fact that Loki was, objectively, Not A Good Person. That didn't stop Tony from liking his company, or enjoying bickering back and forth about the Evil Overlord list, or wanting to do filthy things to his body. It didn't mean Tony was going evil. Maybe that Tony wasn't objective about Loki, but _none of them_ were objective about Loki. It was just that most of them were subjectively _angry_ , and he was subjectively lustful. Or... yeah, stick with lustful for the moment.

But avoiding everyone and everything that wasn't his lab did translate to avoiding Loki; there had been several messages that Tony had left unanswered, before Loki had seemingly given up. (He should have known better than to believe that, Tony knew, but then again, why wouldn't Loki have just gone looking for a more interesting toy?) 

So it was just possible that Loki was telling the truth about why he'd done this. Not the whole truth, because Tony doubted Loki had just one reason for doing anything, even something as mundane as eating a sandwich, let alone infuriating two of his occasional allies. But _a_ truth. He could believe that.

It was still a stupid reason, and stupidity was one of Tony's least favorite things. 

Pushing his luck was one of his actual favorite things, but sometimes he recognized that that, too, was pretty damn stupid. So instead of ranting at Loki again, Tony waited until he was back at the tower, waited until the debriefing was over, waited until Thor had gravely thanked him for his assistance today--”Perhaps my brother will heed your advice, as he ignores mine”--and then waited until he had the chance to read through the damn Overlord list again, because if he made a joke out of this, it was less likely to explode in his face. 

Maybe literally. 

_#61: If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them._ There. That ought to be pretty damn clear. 

_I do not want you as an advisor, Stark._

Tony was about to fire off another message--one he'd probably regret--when Loki continued. _Meet me on the roof of your tower if you wish me to explain precisely how I do want you._

Oh.

“JARVIS,” Tony said immediately, “unless you judge the circumstances to be an emergency, no one is to be given my location or allowed to contact me until further notice, got it?” 

“Yes, sir. I assume that I am also to make certain that Mr. Laufeyson's presence is not reported to anyone?” 

“Damn right,” Tony said. _Fifteen minutes_ , he sent to Loki. That'd give him a chance to grab a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. Maybe even put on a different shirt. He wasn't sure what was appropriate attire for--hopefully--being seduced by a Norse god, but an AC/DC t-shirt with a permanent motor oil stain on it probably wasn't it.

****

“Given how quickly we're usually interrupted,” Loki said about seventeen minutes later, “perhaps I should come to the point.” 

“I told JARVIS not to let anyone interrupt us unless there's an emergency,” Tony protested, then shrugged. “Which probably guaranteed that there's going to be one hell of an emergency in about five minutes, so maybe you're right.” He'd opened the wine just before Loki arrived, and now he poured two glasses, handing one over.

“You are many things, Stark,” Loki said. “Arrogant, insolent, obnoxious -- not to mention that you genuinely believe you're funny.”

“Excuse me? I'm hilarious,” Tony said. “And I didn't come here to be insulted.” 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “And what, in all our conversations, led you to believe you wouldn't be insulted? “ 

Point. “I didn't come here _just_ to be insulted.” 

Loki chuckled. “That's more like it.”

“This is the point where you start listing off my good qualities, right? I can get you started if you need a little help. Brilliant, witty--” 

“Clearly your ego doesn't need any more encouragement.” Loki took a sip of wine. “Not bad for a Midgardian drink,” he conceded. 

“You were going to get right to the point,” Tony said. “You could have done _this_ over the phone.” 

Loki stepped closer, until he was standing directly in front of Tony. He put his hand on Tony's back, bringing him in even closer, and kissed him. 

Well, as points went, that one was beautifully clear, as was the heat in Loki's eyes even after the kiss was over.

“As I said, you are a uniquely irritating man,” Loki said, “but despite that, I find myself wanting to spend more time with you.” He grinned, sharp and wolfish; the word “hungry” passed through Tony's mind. “Some of it even fully clothed and out of bed.” 

Tony grinned back. “I could get behind that plan. All of those plans. But seriously, if you want my attention, try something a little less drastic than getting attacked by dragons and robots at the same time. Showing up naked in my bed would work, by the way.” He'd have to fine-tune the defense systems again, but it'd be totally worth it. 

“Soon,” Loki said, which was definitely what Tony wanted to hear. 

“I apologize, sir,” JARVIS said, which was definitely _not_ what Tony wanted to hear, “but Captain Rogers is quite insistent that this constitutes an emergency.” 

Tony groaned. “Ugh, fine,” he said, because Steve tended to _under_ estimate how terrible things were. “Put him through. Audio only,” he added; he set his glass down on a nearby table and put his arms around Loki for one more lingering kiss. It would have been pretty damn romantic if Loki would have just stopped laughing. 

“I'm going to have to drag you to one of the other realms to get away from your team,” he said, in Tony's ear. 

“Tony? JARVIS said you didn't want to be interrupted, but I really think you need to see--” Steve broke off. “I heard somebody laughing. Is somebody up there with you?” He could practically hear the waves of embarrassment coming off Steve as he realized who that “somebody” probably was and what he was probably interrupting; Tony might have felt a little bad about that, except that--

“Nope,” he said, scowling at the empty space that had been Loki just a few seconds ago. “I'm standing up here all by myself like some kind of asshole. I'll be right down.”

****

For once, locking himself in the lab hadn't helped to shut all the non-engineering parts of Tony's brain off. Oh, sure, he'd repaired all the recent damage to his armor, and designed a few brilliant upgrades; he'd even worked out all the necessary tweaks to the security system that he _might_ want to put in to accommodate the fact that he was considering trying to have some kind of actual... relationship-type thing... with one of the people the defense system was designed to keep out. 

Access to the roof and the penthouse, unrestricted. Tony figured that since he was going to be asking for a lot--he suspected, and a few things Thor had said in the last few days suggested that if he didn't bring this up, Thor would, that he was going to be working his way up to, “You can still be a complete asshole if you want to be, but how about being a complete asshole _for our side_?”--he might as well start out with a display of trust. 

Absolutely _no_ access to any of the other residential floors, except possibly Thor's. If Tony decided to implement this version of the changes, he'd ask Thor first, though he was pretty sure that one, Thor would say yes; two, Loki wouldn't set foot on Thor's floor unless his life depended on it; and three, even then, he'd have to think about it. 

Additional safeguards on Barton's floor, because Clint was trying to grit his teeth and deal with the situation, and Tony didn't want the guy to feel unsafe in his own apartment. He just also didn't want to give Loki up, and he wasn't _that_ unselfish. 

No access to the labs, either--they were already locked down--unless Tony or Bruce overrode the instruction, because that was going to keep SHIELD's outrage down to a baseline Tony could easily ignore. If things changed, if Loki acknowledged that “be an asshole for the good guys” was as excellent as any other plan Tony had ever come up with, he could change that, because he was going to want Loki in here. There were _so many_ things he needed to know about magic. 

As for the common areas, he was going with “access, but have JARVIS monitor.” He wasn't sure how well that was going to go over with the rest of the team, but on the other hand, he owned the damn building, and his what-the-fuck-ever-they're-going-to-call-this could make himself a sandwich if he wanted to. And with JARVIS monitoring, he could be sure that he'd know if Loki was up to anything worse than irritating. Otherwise, JARVIS could delete the footage without any human(oid) seeing it. 

In the interest of fairness, Tony was even prepared to forgo the opportunity to give JARVIS some parameters (a definition of “hot” that would make sense to an AI) for footage that should be sent to Tony's personal server rather than deleted. That was no way to build a what-the-fuck-ever-this-is. 

He knew the word “relationship,” of course. It just didn't seem to make any damn sense when used in conjunction with words like “Loki.” 

But, it seemed like they were actually going to do this. Try to do this, anyway. And also like whatever “this” turned out to be, both of them were hoping for something a little more than a quick fuck. 

Well, Tony thought, they'd have to be, or they'd have given up in frustration weeks ago. 

What Tony wasn't sure about--what he was down here in the lab trying to forget about for a while--was whether or not they could make it work. He'd had enough trouble--and ultimately, had failed at--making things work out with Pepper, who was a normal human woman with no villainous tendencies (unless you counted “making Tony show up at meetings” as villainy, and sometimes he did) and a hell of a lot of patience. In other words, basically the anti-Loki. And Tony had still fucked that up.

And he had absolutely no idea whether Loki had a better track record or not. They'd already learned that going back to Norse mythology was sometimes useful, sometimes not, where Asgard was concerned, and Tony was going to hold tight to the belief that the myths he'd Googled were deeply questionable re: Loki's personal life, because _what the actual fuck, eight-legged horse baby._ Not to mention the wolf and the snake. 

Presumably, in a life of about a thousand years or so, there was some kind of history, but for all Tony knew, every previous attempt could have ended in bloody murder. 

So this, whatever they were going to call it, had a reasonable chance of ending horribly--really horribly, not broken dishes and divorce courts, but betrayal and death and attempts at planetary conquest (again). And that was _after_ how complicated it was going to be _now_ , given that Loki was fairly high up on SHIELD's enemies list. Tony hadn't been able to stop thinking about that, even down here where his work and his robots and his music usually were able to quiet his mind. 

But he hadn't been able to decide that he didn't want to try, either, even with all that weighing against it, because if it worked? 

He couldn't let himself think about the answer to that. It already freaked him out how much he _wanted_ it to work. 

Which ought to make his decision easier, so he should probably talk to Thor about the alarms on his floor and start implementing the new security protocols, then explain to the rest of the Avengers that he needed an evening free of interruptions barring a disaster on the scale of the Chitauri invasion. “Probably without mentioning the Chitauri invasion,” he said to DUM-E, who was doing his best impression of being a good and helpful listener (mostly involving holding his arm up alertly). “I can't see that making things any less awkward.” 

“No,” came a voice from behind him, “I'd much prefer it if you _not_ bring that up among your little friends.”

Tony whirled around, brandishing his soldering iron--the closest thing to a weapon at hand. 

Loki didn't seem particularly intimidated. “You haven't been answering your phone,” he said, “and I did agree to try something less extreme this time.” 

“JARVIS!” Tony shouted. “How the fuck did he get in here?” 

“I am sorry for the shock, sir,” JARVIS replied, “but I felt it was in your best interest to lower the defenses in your laboratory long enough to allow Mr Laufeyson access.” 

“Your servant has been very helpful,” Loki confirmed. “I wouldn't have known where to look for you.” 

“You shouldn't have been able to get in here at all. Nobody should be able to get in here right now.” But Tony put the soldering iron back down on the workbench. It wasn't likely to do him any good even if Loki had meant trouble. 

Okay, Loki probably did mean trouble, but not the kind that required weapons. 

“In my estimation, sir,” JARVIS said, “Mr Laufeyson's presence is likely to be beneficial to your mental health.” 

He was still pissed at his favorite AI, but that particular phrasing struck him as too funny not to laugh. “I bet nobody's ever called you beneficial to their mental health before.” 

“Does that mean you're done complaining about my presence?” 

“No. And it doesn't mean you're forgiven, either, JARVIS,” he added. “It does mean that you--” he pointed at Loki--”get to sit over there--” he pointed at a stool a few feet away-- “and not touch things, until I finish up here.” He grinned. “You can watch me work. You'll probably like it. I promise to bend over a lot.” Not strictly necessary, since the work he wanted to finish up was the modified security protocols, but the least he could do was to provide some entertainment for Loki. 

“And then?” 

Still grinning, Tony said, “And then, we go upstairs and see what happens. You'll probably like that, too.” 

“Do you promise to bend over a lot?” 

“If you're very lucky.” Tony tried to put those images out of his mind for long enough to get some work done, though Loki chuckling to himself didn't help his concentration. 

“You aren't that funny,” Tony said over his shoulder. 

“Yes, I am,” he said. “Check your phone.”

Rolling his eyes, Tony picked up his phone. One new message, which read, _Rule 59: I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am._

“I'm not an Evil Overlord,” Tony pointed out, because no matter how correct he was, he suspected Loki wasn't going to believe him if he argued that JARVIS wasn't smarter than he was, “so it looks to me like that's going to turn out pretty well.” 

Loki grinned. “If you're very lucky.”

**Author's Note:**

> [This is the version of the Evil Overlord List I used.](http://www.worldconquer.org/evil_overlord.html)
> 
> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


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